This research is concerned with authentic science writing, and in particular,
investigating collaborative science writing at secondary school level, using an
online collaborative-writing environment. Specifically, it investigates how measures
of successful authenticity relate to (i) how close to the text-structure of a
prototypical library report genre are collaboratively-written student papers (i.e.,
how close to the model students were taught) (ii) to what extent do the papers use
the language of science as expected at this level of schooling, for example, use of
nominalization, and finally, (iii) what is the degree of participation and contribution
by students in a collaborative writing task? The research also examined how
students' collaboratively written texts evolved, or changed, over time in terms of
their textual structure and of their key linguistic features. The research provides
some insight into how text changes and evolution could be explained in relation to
online dialogue and feedback. Finally, the thesis identifies the implications of the
above for pedagogy and policy, i.e., for (i) students' language development in
science and the use of genre pedagogies, (ii) collaborative writing in science, and
(iii) on line pedagogy?